November 5, 2020
Dear Allen Temple Family and Friends,
Waiting...I hate it. And yes, I know all of the spiritual benefits and virtues that are extolled about it. And I still hate it.
It is a poignant reminder that some things in this life are out of my ultimate control. This necessary, daily realization grates against the very nature of what it means to be human. CONTROL! Was this not the desire that marred the experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden? The struggle for control transcends time and place. And I don't know about you, but it seems as if it has become heightened during this multi-pandemic year called 2020.
The seeming sense of anxiety and powerlessness that is produced by a struggle for control has been intensified as we all await the results of a contentious and critical election season.
This week, all of it drove me back to a well-known mystic whose words have always reached my deep places whenever I have dared to engage them. I offer them to you this Theological Thursday. Scripture reminds us that there is a time to speak and a time to refrain from speaking. Today, I will refrain but rather invite you to meditate and reflect on the truth Howard Thurman shares.
Life Goes On
During these turbulent times we must remind ourselves repeatedly that life goes on.
This we are apt to forget.
The wisdom of life transcends our wisdoms;
the purpose of life outlasts our purposes;
the process of life cushions our processes.
The mass attack of disillusion and despair,
distilled out of the collapse of hope,
has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral.
There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility.
This is the great deception.
By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion
without the will to affirm the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace.
Let us not be deceived.
It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces
by which the dignity of our lives is maintained and sustained.
Birds still sing;
the stars continue to cast their gentle gleam over the desolation of the battlefields,
and the heart is still inspired by the kind word and the gracious deed.
There is no need to fear evil.
There is every need to understand what it does,
how it operates in the world,
what it draws upon to sustain itself.
We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil.
Over and over we must know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body,
the reduction to rubble of cities;
the real target of evil
is to corrupt the spirit of man and to give his soul the contagion of inner disintegration.
When this happens,
there is nothing left,
the very citadel of man is captured and laid waste.
Therefore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within.
This would be to be overcome by evil.
To drink in the beauty that is within reach,
to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness,
to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God
in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind—
this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.
Lord, Deliver Us From Evil! See you Sunday!
Blessings to you!
Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson
Senior Pastor
